Speech Analytics
With the growing number of call centers, there is more demand for speech analytics. This article is intended to give a brief overview of what speech analytics means, the advantages it can bring to businesses and how automatic transcription plays a major role in speech analytics.
1. Introduction to speech analytics
2. Speech analytics advantages
3. Speech analytics software and transcription
1. Introduction to speech analytics
Speech analytics means analyzing voice recordings, call center calls to gain information on customer needs, behaviors, and opinions. In simple terms, speech analytics helps to turn calls and recording into data that can be useful for contact centers for a wide range of reasons. For a long time, speech analytics was done manually, and it took a huge amount of time and effort, considering phone calls were the main interaction form between people and businesses during the pre-internet age, and there wasn’t any tool for analyzing the data automatically. It is easier now with the use of speech analytics software that leverages automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology. ASR helps to automatically transcribe the recordings (convert speech to text), and analyzing text demands less effort than analyzing voice recordings.
Modern technical advances allow people to use social media, email and other similar methods to reach out to companies. However, considering face-to-face interaction is not convenient at all times, phone calls still remain the most important form of communication between customers and companies. Now, there is more demand for speech analytics than ever before. With a growing number of companies and their customer base, there are more call centers and, of course, more calls.
Speech analytics tools can be used to analyze speech in real-time during the call and post-call.
2. Speech analytics advantages
Speech analytics brings a number of benefits to call centers and helps to improve a variety of factors that is crucial in the development and survival of businesses. Let’s have a look at some of the advantages offered by speech analytics tools:
Problem identification and customer satisfaction
One of the primary reasons customers call customer service centers is to report an issue with the product/service. Speech analytics software lets the user find trends in the feedback customers provide by analyzing the words, phrases used by them. It can also help in analyzing customer emotions. Modern speech analytics tools are equipped with technology that is able to detect different emotions in a speaker’s voice. By analyzing the data gathered from the calls, companies find key ideas behind customer calls and try to correct any issue caused by the product and service offered by the company. In other words, speech analytics tools help connect the dots when it comes to identifying a problem.
Helps to offer new products to market
All the companies think about adding new products to their product line and increasing their sales. Product development goes through different stages. Analyzing voice recordings and calls and identifying problems with existing products is one of the key factors in introducing a new product to market. Working on the issues reported by the customers and correcting them opens new doors to new products. Companies use different data collection methods to gain information on what customers want to see in new products, and speech analytics is one of the most effective ways for this purpose.
Allows gathering data from different customer categories naturally
With other data collection methods, marketing researchers need to gather people from different classes, ages, gender etc., in order to get a broad view of the research issue. One of the advantages call centers have over those data collection methods is that people from all demographics call customer centers and state their issues. Speech analytics enables analyzing data that directly comes from those demographics. Call center managers or operators don’t have to look for a specific customer category since people from almost all categories call contact centers themselves.
Contact center agent performance assessment
Speech analytics tools don’t just help with identifying the issues customers face but also help to assess agents who interact with the customers. Having professional call center agents who are able to help the customers with all their queries shows the service level company offers. In a way, the call center agent is the face of the company. In some cases, those agents are the first person customer directly interact with. Therefore leaving a good impression on the customer is an essential factor. By utilizing speech analytics tools, businesses review agents’ interaction with customers (for example, did the agents greet customers, introduce themselves and their position in the company, ask for customers’ names, etc.), their level of professionalism and take measures where necessary. Speech analytics provides companies with an opportunity to train their agents in order to achieve a higher level of customer interaction skills.
Helps to determine strengths and weaknesses
In one of the paragraphs above, we talked about the issues customers face while using a particular product. Analyzing those issues means finding weaknesses that a specific product has. Although speech analytics is mainly concerned with finding weaknesses, it is also a great way to discover what customers consider a strength when it comes to using certain products. This way, businesses can keep those features that customers mention as strengths when producing new products.
Provides an opportunity to approach customers individually
There is no doubt that losing a customer is much easier than getting one. All the businesses try to make sure that even a little complaint customer makes about a product gets solved as quickly as possible. Word of mouth is as relevant as ever and on a bigger scale. In the digital age, social media is one of the most important factors that affect sales. One dissatisfied customer may cause a domino effect, which would result in a company losing other customers. Speech analytics lets the companies evaluate customer needs, behavior individually and solve their problem accordingly. Of course, it is not possible to approach all the customers individually, but companies should try their best considering the growing number of competitors and the risk of losing customers. Utilizing speech analytics software in call centers may be one of the first steps in that direction.
Provides an opportunity to learn about competitors
Speech analytics can also reveal insights into the direct competitors a company has. Usually, when customers talk about an issue they find with a product, they compare it with the same or similar product your competitor sells. Researching competitors is a complex process and requires an in-depth analysis using different research methods, but speech analytics can also contribute a fair amount of data to that research. The information comes directly from the customer; therefore, it is more valuable data compared with the data coming from secondary sources.
It helps to reduce costs
The data gathered utilizing speech analytics may have a significant impact on expenses used for data collection. Companies spend money to get insights into the industry using data collection methods such as interviews, focus group discussions, observation, surveys, etc. Speech analytics may bring enough data, so the company lowers time, effort and money used for particular marketing research.
Reduces the need for more employees
Since the speech analytics software analyses the data automatically, there is no need to have more employees who check and analyzes recordings manually.
Increases profits
All the benefits we listed above help to increase sales by correcting mistakes and enhancing productivity and service. Speech analytics is one of the proven methods of analyzing customer needs, choices, behaviour since it uses the data from primary data sources - customers themselves.
3. Speech analytics software and transcription
Speech analytics software works with speech recognition technology which allows converting speech to text. The process is called transcription. Transcription can happen in real-time or voice recording can be transcribed afterward.
Why is transcript important in analyzing voice recordings?
First of all, analyzing a voice recording by listening to it takes a significant amount of time. You have to start and stop the recording all the time, re-listen to parts you don’t understand or miss on the first try. Transcription, especially automatic transcription software, makes this process easier. If you have an audio recording transcript, it is easier to look for specific words, phrases, themes. Automated transcription software editor lets you search the entire transcript by keywords that are relevant to you. You can click on any word or phrase on the transcript and play the corresponding part of the audio.